question

What was an important influence for new English words in America?

answer

new inventions, American Indians, new physical features and animals

question

according to the Anatolian hearth theory, Indo-European languages diffused across Europe

answer

With the diffusion of agriculture

question

How has Switzerland remained at peace with four or five different languages within their borders?

answer

Switzerland has a decentralized government

question

Which is the first and second most spoken language in the world?

answer

Mandarin, English

question

The language spoken by the greatest number of people in the world is

answer

Mandarin

question

What countries speak Austro-Thai?

answer

Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam

question

English is classified as a Low Germanic language because the people who migrated to England came from the northern lowlands.

answer

True

question

Icelandic has probably changed less over time than any other Germanic language.

answer

True

question

Immigrants to which American coloines had the most diverse backgrounds?

answer

Middle Atlantic

question

The Icelandic language has changed less than any other Germanic language because of

answer

Iceland's relative isolation from other places

question

Recent evidence points to the first speakers of the Indo-European

answer

Kurgans

question

The most widely spoken language in Brazil is

answer

Portuguese

question

If two groups who speak the same language are isolated from one another for a long period, the two groups will speak languages that are so different that they will be classified as separate languages.

answer

True

question

A creolized language is

answer

a mix of indigenous and colonial languages

question

The language family encompassing the languages of the People's Republic of China is

answer

Sino-Tibetan

question

Which of the following is not a Romance language?

answer

Bulgarian

question

The language spoken by soldiers stationed throughout the Roman Empire was known as

answer

Vulgar Latin

question

Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family.

answer

True

question

Approximately three-gourths of the Chinese people speaks Cantonese.

answer

False

question

Dravidian is part of the Indo-European language family.

answer

False

question

English is part of which language branch?

answer

Germanic

question

Collectively, Indic languages constitute the world's second largest language group.

answer

True

question

Physical boundaries such as mountains or oceans are strong intervening obstacles creating barriers to communication between people living on the opposite sides.

answer

True

question

The most popular language in China is Cantonese.

answer

False

question

Celtic languages

answer

were threatened by extinction in England, are still spoken by people in France, and have been revived in some parts of the British isles

question

From where did the four Scandinavian languages derive?

answer

Old norse

question

As in Hindi, the five different Chinese languages are written the same way.

answer

True

question

English was spread around the world through the establishment of British colonies.

answer

True

question

Nearly half the people in the world speak an Indo-European language

answer

True

question

Romanian is a Balto-Slavic language

answer

False

question

The global distribution of languages results from a combination of which two geographic processes?

answer

interaction,isolation, diffusion, and migration

question

Which of these languages are the North Germanic Group?

answer

Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Swedish

question

Lingua Franca languages include

answer

Hindustani, Swahili, and Russian

question

When people who speak a given language migrate to a different location and become isolated from other members of their tribe

answer

isolation usually results in the differentiation of one language into two

question

English is the most important language in North America primarily because of

answer

The diffusion of English colonies

question

Basque is the only non-Indo-European language currently spoken in Europe

answer

False

question

Urdu is the most important language of

answer

Pakistan

question

Which group of the Germanic family is extinct?

answer

East Germanic

question

The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons were Celtic tribes who invaded England 1500 years ago.

answer

False

question

Which language family transcends (in importance) the number of speakers because its languages were used to write the holiest books of three major world religions: the Bible (New and Old Testaments), and the Quran?

answer

Afro-Asiatic

question

English is an official language in countries which contain one-third of the people of the world.

answer

True

question

Which Romance languages are primarily spoken in southwestern Europe and Latin America?

answer

Portuguese

question

Americans pronounce words differently than the British primarily because people changed their accents after moving to the American colonies.

answer

True

question

The two most important languages in South America are

answer

Portuguese and Spanish

question

The first speakers of the language that evolved into English were tribes that lived in present-day

answer

Denmark

question

In the Korean language, Chinese and Japanese words are the principal sources for creating new words to describe new technology and concepts.

answer

True

question

After Russian, Ukranian and Belorusian are the two most important East Slavic languages.

answer

True

question

What languages are Low Germanic?

answer

Flemish, Dutch, Frisian, and Afrikaans

question

What is an isogloss?

answer

A boundary between language religions

question

English is part of which branch of the Indo-European family?

answer

Germanic

question

Germanic, Romance, and Latin are all branches of Indo-European

answer

False

question

Which European country(ies) are not dominated by Indo-European speakers?

answer

Estonia, Hungary, and Finland

question

Why are 16 percent of the Chinese population over the age of sixteen unable to read or write more than a few characters of Chinese?

answer

Large number of Chinese characters

question

The Kurgans

answer

may have been the first speakers of an Indo-European language

question

A language group is a collection of languages within a a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.

answer

True

question

The second-largest language family is

answer

Sino-Tibetan

question

A form of a language spoken in a local area is a

answer

Dialect

question

A literary tradition is

answer

The written form of a language

question

The desire to use native languages other than Russian was a major drive in the breakup of the Soviet Union a decade ago.

answer

True

question

A group of languages that share a common origin but have since evolved into individual languages is a

answer

Language branch

question

The Korean language does not use ideograms

answer

True

question

What language families belong to India?

answer

Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Indo-European, and Sino-Tibetan

question

English is classified in the Low Germanic subgroup of the West Germanic group.

answer

True

question

Hebrew is an example of

answer

A revived language

question

Which (in numbers of people) is the world's most extensively spoken language?

answer

Indo-European

question

Why have Japanese and Korean formed distinctive language families?

answer

Japan is an island and Korea is a peninsular state

question

The Flemings and Walloons live in what country?

answer

Belgium

question

Both the Angles and the Normans contributed to the development of the English language, because they

answer

Invaded England

question

A lingua Franca is

answer

a language that is mutually understood by people who have different native languages

question

Speakers of two different Indian languages who wish to communicate with each other can sometimes turn to English as a common language.

answer

True

question

The Flemings and Walloons speak languages belonging to different

answer

Language branches

question

English and German belong to the North Germanic language group.

answer

False

question

Germanic invaders of England included all but which tribe?

answer

Norman's

question

languages related through a common ancestor differences are not as old as in language families scientific evidence can confirm branches derived from the same family what do these distinguish?

answer

A language branch

question

English is part of which language family?

answer

Indo-European

question

Switzerland has four official languages

answer

True

question

African languages are distinguished by the fact that

answer

few are spoken by more than one million people

question

Pronunciation has changed more in England than in the United States.

answer

True

question

The current growth in the use of English has occurred because of

answer

Expansion diffusion, military conquest, and migration

question

When languages are depicted as leaves on trees, the roots of the trees below the surface represent

answer

Possible prehistoric super families

question

Offical languages in Switzerland include all but which of the following?

answer

Flemish

question

New Englanders use a different dialect of English than other Americans because they came from different regions of England

answer

True

question

The most important language family in Sub-Saharan Africa is

answer

Niger-congo

question

A group of languages that share a common ancestor before recorded history is a

answer

Language family

question

The four most frequently spoken branches of Indo-European include all but

answer

Celtic

question

The Chinese government is imposing Mandarin countrywide

answer

True

question

There are as many ways to write Hindi as there are ways to speak it.

answer

False

question

The branch of the Indo-European language family with the most speakers is English.

answer

False

question

The large number of individual languages documented in Africa has resulted primarily from

answer

Thousands of years of isolation between tribal groups

question

A language of international communication is known as a lingua franca.

answer

True

question

Hebrew is an example of an extinct language.

answer

False

question

English is part of which language group?

answer

West Germanic

question

Roman Catholic missionaries devised the Vietnamese alphabet

answer

True

question

A language family is a set of languages that can be shown to derive from a common ancestor.

answer

True

question

The Eastern group of Indo-Iranian language branch is known as Indic.

answer

True

question

Mexican Spanish and Colombian Spanish are dialects of Castillian Spanish.

answer

True

question

In what significant ways does U.S. English differ from that of England?

answer

Pronunciation, vocabulary, and spelling

question

Indo-European divided into different branches because of isolation of different speakers

answer

True

question

Unlike most examples of expansion diffusion of English, recent changes in English have percolated up from common usage rather than directed down to the masses by the elite.

answer

True

question

The first speakers of Indo-European were the Kurgans

answer

True

question

The second most widely spoken language family in Europe is

answer

Uralic

question

Chinese is written in the form of

answer

Ideograms

question

The most frequently spoken Afro-Asiatic language is Arabic.

answer

True

question

Basque is spoken primarily in

answer

The Pyrenees mountains

question

Franglais is

answer

the use of English in the French language

question

Russian is part of what language branch?

answer

Baltimore-Slavic

question

An Indo-European language is spoken in which of these European countries?

answer

Bulgaria

question

Noah Webster primarily conceived the difference in American pronunciation and spelling from that of the British Isles because

answer

it would establish a uniquely American dialect, it would reduce cultural dependence on England, and it would inspire national pride

question

The most widely spoken Indo-European languae is

answer

English

question

When languages are depicted as leaves on trees, the trunks of the trees represent

answer

Language families

question

There is one single Chinese language

answer

False

question

How do the structures of Chinese and Japanese language differ?

answer

Japanese uses two systems of phonetic symbols

question

What is one of the main elements of cultural diversity among the nearly one billion residents of India?

answer

Language

question

British and American English differ in all but which of the following?

answer

Alphabet

question

Dialects developed within England primarily because

answer

different Germanic invaders settled in different regions

question

English is a language in the West Germanic group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family.

answer

True

question

Regional dialects in England can be traced back to the settlement patterns of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

answer

True

question

What treaty ensured that Spanish and Portuguese would be diffused to the western portion of the New World?

answer

Treaty of tordesillas

question

A standard Arabic language has deceloped among the 230 million speakers because

answer

of the influence of the Quran, newspapers, and radio

question

The two largest language families in the world are

answer

Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European

question

The most widely used languages in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh come from the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.

answer

True

question

The three tribes that brought the beginnings of English to the British Isles came from

answer

Germany and Denmark

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